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What can you say about John Davey except that the guys knows how to put on a good conference. He also sounds a lot like David Brent which means that almost everything he says is funny. This was my second time at Flash on the Beach and this year I actually got to stay for the whole thing and attend a bunch of sessions. I took part in an Adobe town hall meeting as well as giving a solo session entitled Platform Jiu-Jitsu. Below are the main things that stand out to me about the conference as I write this. |
The Adobe Keynote
As is typical at Flash conferences, Adobe gave the opening keynote presentation. Richard showed one really cool demo that I hadn’t seen before. It was a cloth simulation where you could yank and pull on a piece of cloth and see it deform. What was even cooler was when he changed the surface texture to be video. I don’t think a lot of people in the audience understood what they were seeing. I need to get my hands on that demo! Apparently some in the audience were unhappy that the Desktop Keeley AIR application was shown. We show that only as an example of the kind of cool branding that you can do with AIR and, of course, is not meant to offend anyone.
Great Sessions on AIR
It was great to see the community doing some sessions on AIR. I spent most of last year talking about it and it is refreshing to hear a non-Adobe take on it. I saw Marco Casario’s session on creating mashups with AIR. He went over how to incorporate popular APIs like Flickr and Twitter into AIR. Peter Elst also did a beyond the basics session but unfortunately I missed it.
James Patterson
The conference met back at 8:00 pm in the Dome each night for the Inspire Session. The first night we were treated to James Patterson who was great. He has such a unique animation style and is a very entertaining presenter. He showed the basic techniques he uses for animation on the timeline in Flash. He typically starts with a drawing created in his sketchbook and then animates it frame-by-frame out to nothing. Then he animates it the other way creating a nice looping in/out effect. He then takes these and collages them together. The highlights were the VH1 commercials and the sandwich spots.
Adobe Town Hall
On Tuesday Serge, Andrew, Richard, Paul, and myself took part in a town hall meeting where we took questions from the audience for an hour. This is always fun especially when someone puts us on the spot about something. We got the UK pricing issue question which Andrew answered nicely. Basically it comes down to exchange rates and the fact that the US dollar is in the crapper. Paul answered the Flash on the iPhone question which led some blogs to report that it will definitely be happening. Just to clear things up a little, we have a version of the Flash player running on the iPhone but whether or not we or Apple chooses to distribute it is another story.
Platform Jiu-Jitsu
Later on Tuesday I gave my session which was very well attended. I had some wicked jet lag since arriving in England and unfortunately I wasn’t as full of energy as I normally am. I introduced the concept of a Flash Platform Polymath which I’ll talk more about in another post. The session consisted mainly of a rundown of the latest stuff happening with the platform. I went into Pixel Bender and showed how to create a simple filter and then I built a simple parallax 3D example using Flash CS4. My time management skills sucked in this session as I was only about half-way through my session with about 10 minutes remaining. Despite that I think it was generally well received. I just need to stop talking so much on every slide 
.
FOTB is Coming to Miami
At the opening of the conference John broke the news that Flash on the Beach is coming to America in April, more specifically in Miami. This is great news as I have always gotten complaints from people in Florida about the lack of Flash conferences in the south. Look for more details on this soon.
Rob Chiu Can Edit
In my previous post you can watch the trailer for Flash on the Beach created by the Ronin, Rob Chiu. I have seen a lot of his work before but have never seen a full session. During the hour he showed off a lot of earlier work and some newer short films. He has really mastered the quick, frenetic editing style which is very reminiscent of Kyle Cooper’s Se7en titles. I still can’t believe that he shot the FOTB video on a Canon HV20. I need to start saving for my RedRock right now.
Jonathan Harris is Misguided
The conference was wrapped up by Johnathan Harris who is probably best known in the Flash world for his 10×10 application. He has also done other really cool projects like the Processing-based We Feel Fine application. Overall I really like his work but at the end of his session he had some interesting things to say to the Flash community. He basically went on a rant about how he doesn’t like the current state of tinkering and experimentation that our community does. He thinks we should be doing more important work that really has an effect on people. This unfortunately happens to many artists who start to think the world revolves around their work. Artsy story telling is only a small fraction of what Flash is used for. Education, science, government, law enforcement, and yes entertainment are just a few of areas that take advantage of Flash technology. And the tinkerers and experimenters that he mentioned are the people that have always pushed the technology to the next level, enabling people like him to tell their stories in new and interesting ways. If he wants to go live in the mountains of Bhutan and bring back stories then he can definitely do that. Hell I really enjoyed all the work he showed. But to try and minimize what the rest of us are doing with Flash and other related technologies is at best, a little arrogant.
Lee
your 10×10.com link appears to be dodgy GoDaddy parking… or is that art?
Thanks for this, it’s a great summary for someone who didn’t get to go.
One gripe though, is this: “UK pricing issue question which Andrew answered nicely. Basically it comes down to exchange rates and the fact that the US dollar is in the crapper.”
WTF? The pricing structure of flash has been the same irrelevant of the performance of the dollar, and it’s not as if the pound is doing well either, is it? That’s a lame-assed response to the question. And I wish I’d been there to say so.
@Adam Thanks Adam. It’s fixed now.
@John One thing you can be sure of is that this isn’t some malicious attempt to squeeze more money out of UK users. Andrew gave a more in-depth answer to this question at the talk.
I’d like to have heard that explanation.
If the price is much higher, then they are squeezing more money out of us, there’s no way you can twist that one. Whether or not it’s malicious is another issue. I don’t think it’s malicious, just incredibly cynical and opportunistic.
A Redrock is fine, Lee, but also consider a Brevis or Letus. Then you can always add the vignette in post
Thanks for keeping us up to date.
I really loved Robert Hodgins presentation.
Couldn’t find his first video he showed with the trentemoller music though.
He did give quite a good explanation. The reasoning was they don’t want it to be more expensive the fact is it does cost more to distribute it over here. You end up paying Irish VAT on the product (when downloading) as the servers are based in Ireland,and they are in no doub subject to a levy of European laws and taxes.Although I do belive the it is silly that it’s cheaper for me to fly to new york and buy a copy than to download it from their site, Im sure there is a way round this as many other software companies find a way. That said if I were to buy a laptop or a guitar it would always be cheaper in the US. Just the way things are I suppose…
Totally agree with the point you’re making about Jonathan Harris. He’s an artist and he should realize that not everything is about ideas that last for 20 years. It was quite selfish to say to all those people who are working day and night on concepts, ideas and delivering great applications or webservices that their work was a bit pointless because it doesn’t mean anything for future generations. The web is evolving all the time and I think that their will be no certain individuals that push the internet as a platform towards something amazing. I really like his work too, but he’s bit of a dreamer and surrealist.
With the greatest of respect Lee, I don’t think the answer on European pricing was answered at all well. In fact the majority of the people in the room left with the strong opinion that Adobe would happily allow us to buy the software from the US on the clear understanding that we would not receive any support on the products…which left pretty much everyone around me chatting to their neighbour about how they didn’t really care about support and would happily make the compromise for the cost reduction.
I say this with total respect for you – it is simply my opinion as an audience member. Perhaps the town hall meeting should be in the Dome next year and allow for a longer session because by the sounds of it the impression that Adobe left with was very different to the way that the audience received it.
Great rundown of the conference though. It was by the far the best conference on Flash that I’ve ever been to.
Hi Lee,
I just returned from Brighton to and just like last year I’m full of inspiration and energy….looking forward to the CS4 package. Really liked your session about Polymath, and just wanted to add GMUNK on the list of people, that was awesome. He’s a very funny guy, and his reel was just fantastic. Looking forward to next year… cheers!
@Gromit Yeah it is tough to explain in a short amount of time I guess. We got an internal memo explaining the whole pricing thing but unfortunately I can’t release it publicly. Let me try to see if I can get a version for public consumption. One thing to note is that the UK pricing has always been a little more than the US and that was to cover the extra costs of doing business there. With the way the exchange rates are right now, we are actually making less on CS4 since we didn’t want to raise the price.
so, if you have seen the flash player on the iphone internally…
1. is it as3?
2. what issues present itself?
3. does it work well?
@joshk Unfortunately I have not seen it myself. I’m just as curious as you are.
About Jonathan Harris you said:
»But to try and minimize what the rest of us are doing with Flash …«
But he included his own works in it, too.
Read it at: http://www.number27.org/beyondflash.html
»In my view, there have been no masterpieces yet in the online world, my own work included.«
Ahh, you folks in the States have nothing to worry about – down in Australia we hardly get any conferences…
On the upside we do have a LOT of beaches… so maybe FOTB should have an Oz leg
thanks Lee! The adaptor was a letus mini attached to the hv20.. used a 28mm nikon prime 2.8 – all the vignetting was in camera
I’ve always admired the work of Harris, but after hearing the takeaway you and Natzke had, I will put Harris in a bucket with Josh Davis as being someone who’s work I will follow, but words I will not listen to.
Wish I could have been there.
Well try Cape Town South Africa … we have a conference a day! Yeah everyone here still uses flash 5 and there are no beaches on our coastline! (heaps of sarcasm)
Hey,
I so wish I could have been there. But alas, my company pulled a fast one and it was never to be. All my mates were down there too, phoning my about how great it all was.
For anyone who is interested though:-
http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2008/10/03/flash-on-the-beach-2008-keynote/
Thats the Keynote speech from this years conference.
Hi Lee
I want to know if you are doing any multitouch stuff? I want to see how it connects to flash .
Thanks for the great job you do.
I want to buy the US (english, not translated) version from the US store in download version. There is no propper argument for why this is made impossible for europeans. Its ridiculous and i hope european sales will be so low that adobe will have to act.